A Simple and Powerful Tool for Building Your Change Activation Plan

Change is constant. Change is everywhere. Change, change, change. We all hear about it; we feel it everyday at work and in our personal lives. The noise is deafening: "We're transforming the landscape of our industry as we know it!" "The change we're bringing to the marketplace will drive our growth forward!" "Our process for innovation is groundbreaking and transcending!"

Is there a word that combines hyperbole and B.S.? I'll work on that later.

Change is real, but it's organic. It's deep in the culture. When facilitated correctly, it's purposeful, prototyped, and thoughtful. Most of all, change is action: tangible activities that test, evaluate, recalibrate, and progress. These activities and actions are what move change forward. Change occurs when you activate the organization and help move your hands-on team incrementally to a place of authentic advocacy.

The secret sauce? Action and communication. Aligned, visual communications and actions will drive more success in change/transformation initiatives than anything else. We’ve designed a way to help you get started: the Change Activation Canvas. This canvas is a simple yet powerful tool to help build an initial activation plan and get to work.

The Change Activation Canvas is the working space. Think through your target audience, your current state situation (the reason for change), and your desired future state. Thinking about the audience you need to address and using the change activation building blocks as inspiration, choose activities and tools to populate the activation curve located on the Change Activation Canvas. These tools and exercises are labeled with the recommended area within the activation curve in which they would be most effective. For example, if you want to move your desired audience from understanding the current change initiative to an acceptance of the what the change means, you might want to consider using a map/visual explanation or a visual card deck.

Try it. Experiment. Get some ideas and actions out into your audience and start progressing toward your future state. And ask for help; co-creation can drive exponential success.